Richard Dawkins

Clinton Richard Dawkins (born March 26, 1941), better known as Richard Dawkins, is a British zoologist, born in Nairobi, in Kenya. He is currently Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford, and is one of the most prominent biologists alive today.

He is probably best known for his popularisation of the "selfish gene" theory (see "Williams Revolution"), described in his book The Selfish Gene. As an ethologist, with a principal interest in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he popularised the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution. This gene point of view also provides a basis for understanding kin selection which was originally suggested by J. B. S. Haldane and expanded by W. D. Hamilton.

Dawkins has been one of the major proponents of sociobiological theory and was the originator of the term meme which spawned the theory of memetics. In the controversy over the interpretation of the theory of evolution that is colloquially called The Darwin Wars, one party is often named for Dawkins and the rival party for Stephen Jay Gould. This reflects the pre-eminence of each as a populariser of the contesting view points, rather than because either is the more substantial or extreme champion of these positions. Dawkins acquiesced in this role from the time of his scathing review (published in January 1985) of Not in Our Genes by Rose, Kamin and Lewontin.

He is an ardent and outspoken atheist, Honorary Associate of the National Secular Society and Vice-President of the British Humanist Association. In his essay "Viruses of the Mind", he interprets religions using the memetics theory.

See also: Richard Dawkins on Wikiquote.

Biographical information

Dawkins comes from an upper-middle class family which can be found in the pages of Burke's Landed Gentry as "Dawkins of Over Norton". His father, John Clinton Dawkins, was a descendant of the Clinton family which held the Earldom of Lincoln. He is married to former actor Lalla Ward having been introduced to her by Douglas Adams (who was a colleague of hers on the production team of Dr Who).

Selected works

Books

• The Selfish Gene (1976; second edition, 1989)
• The Extended Phenotype (1982)
• The Blind Watchmaker (1986)
• River out of Eden (1995)
• Climbing Mount Improbable (1996)
• Unweaving the Rainbow (1998)
• A Devil's Chaplain (2003)

• "Viruses of the Mind" (1993)
• The real romance in the stars - A critical view of astrology (1995)

• A web-site on Dawkins
• Full bibliography